In current teleconferencing applications no mechanism currently exists by which a user joining the conferencing session is automatically identified to other participants of the conferencing session. Nor is there a way to verify the identity of the user calling into the conferencing session. Currently, a user who joins a conferencing session is not required to validate his or her identity and may join the conferencing session so long as the user has a call-in number and a participant passcode. Thus, anyone who obtains the phone number and passcode may join the conferencing session. Furthermore, every user who joins, or is invited to join the conferencing session is given the same call-in number and passcode. Thus, the other participants must rely on the joining user to correctly identify themselves.
Another problem with current teleconferencing systems is that a user is granted fewer privileges than the user may be entitled to receive because the user may be calling into the conferencing session via a communication device with a phone number not recognized by the system. Thus, the system treats the incoming caller as an anonymous user and does not grant the user full access or privileges. In addition, if a user is identified as an anonymous user, the anonymous user is permitted access to the conferencing session for a predetermined maximum number of minutes. In other embodiments, if an anonymous user joins the conference and there is no enterprise user in the conference, the anonymous user is only given the maximum number of minutes. In either case, once the minutes expire, the anonymous user is dropped from the conferencing session.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that embodiments of the present invention have been made. Also, although relatively specific problems have been discussed, it should be understood that embodiments of the present invention should not be limited to solving the specific problems identified in the background.